IT was the turn of the festival’s artistic director, Tim Lowe, to pick up his own cello for Saturday’s lunchtime recital, in partnership with John Lenehan’s piano.

They opened with Mendelssohn, whose music was a special feature this year, following up with Beethoven and Schumann, and slipping in some Suk for good measure. This was chamber music-making of the highest quality.

Mendelssohn was still a teenager when he wrote his Variations Concertantes for his cello-playing brother. It emerged as calmly self-assured here – until its only minor-key variation when it took wing dramatically.

The opening of Beethoven’s C major Cello Sonata, Op 102 No 1, was deceptively somnolent, a complete contrast with the menacing first Allegro, from whose dotted figure the duo drew maximum momentum. Its humorous finish made the start of the Adagio all the more eerie, an aura barely dispelled by its faint ray of major key. That only happened in the witty finale.

Then the pair inserted an unadvertised piece, Suk’s early Ballade and Serenade Op 3, the one pensive, the other intimate, even dainty. It was the calm before the hijinks of Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro, Op 70, better known, to me anyway, in its original version for horn and piano.

Clearly a cello cannot quite career around as a horn may. But we still had a soulful Adagio, complemented by a rollicking Allegro, the duo ideally taut and beautifully balanced.